


They Don't Know

by cerulean_sin (am_bellanoire)



Series: The Captain and Her First Mate (Huma One-Shots) [5]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Descendants 2, Teenage Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 02:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21028448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/am_bellanoire/pseuds/cerulean_sin
Summary: They say we don't know a thing about love, but they don't know a thing about us. I know what I feel, can't tell me it isn't real. They don't understand our love.





	They Don't Know

_"They say we don't know a thing about love, but they don't know a thing about us. I know what I feel, can't tell me this isn't real. They don't understand our love..."_ \- Tahj Mowry

* * *

Uma can sense the tension in the air as soon as she walks into the dimly lit kitchen, the smell of old grease and scorched scales assaulting her nostrils. But she doesn't falter, as small as she seems when compared to her mother's large form, she meets the sea witch's glare head on, tossing her turquoise braids over her shoulder. 

_“I don't want you hanging 'round that Hook boy no more,”_ Ursula commands, not even glancing up from where her attention is focused on the fryer.

“Why not?”

It's a foolish move, no, outright stupid, and yet Uma poses the question anyway. And promptly has to dodge one of the cecaelia's heavy tentacles that snaps towards her in a reprimand. She is quick enough this time but not without fair exchange and she trips, falling backward into the stack of dented metal trays that go clattering loudly to the grimy ground. 

_“Because I said so,”_ her mother sneers, turning back to boiliing oil, her bloated, plum face fixed in disgust, _“I'm upping your hours at the shop. Clean that mess up.”_

“She told me I can't hang with you no more,” Uma mutters sullenly, her eyes tightening into a wince as Harry gently prods the dark bruise above her elbow. 

“Ye gonna listen to her?” Harry's tone is kept purposely light but she knows him too well to be fooled by it. She punches his shoulder with a little more force than what's considered playful. 

“Not a chance, you idiot.”

They both know the consequences for outright defiance on an Isle rife with villains and criminals but as they sit side by side atop the roof of a crumbling brick building, the lights of Auradon just visible through the dark smog that whirls between the barrier, care is hard to dredge up. 

_“If I see you following behind the sea hag's daughter, I'll run ye through. Boy.”_

His father is drunk, his eyes glowing with crimson fire, his beard in tangles, face haggard, pirate's hat askew. Hook casting ominous shadows in the flickering candlelight of the cluttered captain's quarters of the Jolly Roger. The ship is sweltering. Harry can smell his father's stinking breath and reeking body from where he stands. 

“I'm her first mate, da. I'm s'posed to follow her.”

An empty bottle of rum shatters against the wall behind him, a hairsbreadth from his head. Far too close a call for Harry to remain absolutely stoic. But he doesn't give the decaying pirate the satisfaction of seeing him cower. 

_“Yer the son of a captain,”_ the growl is dripping with malice, _“Ye follow no one, especially not half a fish.”_

“He said he'd kill me if he sees me with ye again.”

The words are spoken with a level of nonchalance that doesn't bleed over into the way he curls braids of turquoise around his fingers. Uma recognizes the gesture for what is, the comfort he seeks from it and remains still, eyelashes fluttering in the wake of the waves of calm that wash over her from the display of affection. 

But her tone is anything but calm as she searches his face for any sign of foundering. He is a ship unscathed, hull still intact, though she has to be sure. 

“I don't want you to die, Harry.”

His smile makes something in her chest clench, the kiss he presses to her temple running her fears aground even if only temporarily. 

“He'd have to catch me first, darling. The drunken fool.”

_“What did I tell you, girl?”_

Uma is trapped. There is nowhere to run. Not this time. Her mother's fleshy form blocks the only exit and her heart hammers in earnest against her rib cage. She tries to regulate her breathing, tries to put on a brave facade. She is captain of a crew, she is a leader. She will not let Ursula see the fear she feels. 

“I don't give a damn what you told me,” she bites through clenched teeth, struggling to meet her mother's beady gaze but pleased with the steadiness of her tone, wicked glee that temporarily gains the upper hand over trepidation at the shocked look that clouds the sea witch's face, “You can't keep me from him.”

Because she can't. There is nothing she can do. But _Neptune_ if she isn't going to try. Uma can take on one or two of her mother's coiling appendages with ease. She is well practiced in the art of getting out of range of hostile blows and delivering them herself. But this isn't a sword fight and her prowess with a cutlass doesn't apply here. Not when her mother batters her with four of her six tentacles, one wrapping around her throat, a strangling hold that locks her into place and she's helpless against the thrashing the other three deliver. She can't even scream because the thick and muscular vice cuts off her airway and keeps squeezing until the edges of her vision fade to black. 

“She could have killed ye,” Harry chastises, his brogue harsh and jarring but Uma can hear the concern and the fear he tries so hard to hide. 

“She almost did,” she says, her voice gone to thin and raspy from the crushing force that threatened to shred her vocal chords. 

Her first mate traces the odd bruise pattern branded around her neck. The discoloration extends further than it has before. Thanks in large part to the skin bared by her favored pirate attire. She didn't wear leather skirts or vest when she'd been a child. Preferring the effective though thin barrier long pants and patched sleeves had provided. Now, she bares battle scars and broken blood vessels like armor. 

“Yer mad.”

She smiles, a gnash of sharp white teeth that is untouched by the pain that throbs and lingers. She doesn't feel it, not with Harry near. She is untouchable. 

“You like a little crazy, don't you, Hook?”

He returns the smile and his is spilling over with wickedness but a trained dark eye can see the unconditional love swimming below the surface, something akin to utter worship. 

“Aye.”

_“Ye get off on trying me patience don't ye, boy?”_

Calista Jane is crying in the doorway, not entirely silent but her sobs are hushed and her tears roll down her chafed cheeks unbridled. Harriet keeps it together better, her stance convincingly resolute though every fiber in her being thrums with electricity as she watches her father drive her only brother into the wall by the loose scruff of his shirt, punctuating each word with a skull rattling bang. 

Harry absorbs the manhandling, the pain. The blue of his eye is glazed over and tinged pink, blood leaks in instaunched rivulets from a gash above his brow. But he grins and the grin is far more terrifying than the looming pirate. 

“I think I do, da,” he laughs, a sickening sound that caresses the skin with the sharpness of a thousand tiny blades, “I think I do.”

It's enough to give Captain Hook pause, his wild eyes widen, his gaunt face going slack. The haze of rum is far too strong for him to regain his composure but the ferocity and menace remains.

_“Either ye've gutted yer cod or she's got ye under a spell.”_

Harry's head feels far too heavy for his neck and shoulders to support. It's as if he is underwater. He can hear his youngest sister's tearful voice, can hear his father's poisonous words. But it's garbled, dancing back and forth over the line of sense and nonsense. 

'Maybe both,” he breathes as the ship's cabin blurs into nothingness. 

Gil brings him back to the Lost Revenge, hoisted over his broad shoulder like a sack of potatoes, He comes to as they're climbing up the gangplank. And then he is met with the familiarity of his captain's quarters. The smell, the feel, the sight a cooling salve on his internal burns and external wounds. 

“We can't keep doing this,” Uma says as she holds a damp rag to his forehead in preparation to stitch the split skin closed, and though his eyes can't yet focus on her, he can hear the thickness of unshed tears in her voice and it makes his stomach turn, “We're not gonna make it.”

He tries to speak, tries to give her comfort but his tongue weighs a thousand tonnes and everything is shrouded by a layer of fog. The words he means to extend amenity never come and he hates the look of defeat that drives the strength from her face. 

“Why can't they just leave us alone?”

Hours later, he hears the question that lacks fortitude and is boldly vulnerable. So unlike his sea hardy pirate queen, that it rouses him from his stupor. He bullies the pain that ravages his body into retreat, cupping a mahogany cheek in a pale and clammy hand, his lips heavy as an anchor but able to hoist and let sail the words he's longed to say.

'They can piss off,” a calloused thumb brushes the tear dampened corner of a dark eye, “Nothing can keep me from you, captain,” the blunt edges of his teeth nip at the knuckles of the hand she draws across his beaten face “Don't ye dare give up.”

“I love him mom,” the word feels acidic as bile on her tongue but carries the weight of the world because of its truth, “I _love_ him. You're just too bitter, too fucked up in the head to realize it. What we have, it's good.”

She's ready for the barrage of tentacles now, anticipates it. Uma draws her cutlass from its sheath, prepared to dice the limbs down to bite sized and toss them in the bubbling fryer to serve. Ursula's eyes hold true fear for the first time in seventeen years as she warily stares down the edge of the blade.

_“Get outta my sight, ungrateful bitch,”_ the sea witch snaps, self preservation taking taking hold, any semblance of maternal instinct tucking tail, _“I see you 'round here again, I'll choke the life outta you.”_

Harry has never seen such abject terror in the poisonous red of his father's eye. The honed point of a dagger held against the throbbing line of blue at his throat, a tutting pocket watch swinging like a pendulum in his free hand. Hook's body prone and quaking, a coward to the very end. 

“Ticktock, da,” the boy pirate croons, smile feral and starved, “Yer time's running out, I'd say.”

But like a shark, James Hook senses blood and bites, thrashing as a fish fooled by lure and plucked from the water does. He finds the chink in his heir's chain mail that despite its steel loops, could never compete with his own personal brand of crazy. It's a crippling thing born from nobility before magic weaved its ungodly spell. He knows how to strike where it hurts even under the guise of helplessness, 

_“Love, boy?”_ Hook finds satisfaction when the strength in his son's threatening gleam crumbles to dust, is swept away by waves of rancor. It feeds him. _“Yer weak, weaker than a baby seahorse. I curse the day yer mother gave her life to bring ye into the world.”___

_ _And Harry cannot find it in him to deliver the slash to a life giving artery that promises to put an end to the tyrant that has tried but no longer can rule him. He leaves the former captain intact because his heart won't allow him to become the monster that sired him._ _

_ _“She threw me out,” Uma growls as she paces the weather hardened wood of her ship, her fingers hooked into claws, raking at her braids, "Told me not to come back.”_ _

_ _Harry merely watches the chaotic energy of his captain that she tries to expend, the last words he spoke to his father still fresh in his mind._ _

_ _“So did he.”_ _

_ _Uma whirls to face him, the expression on her face the perfect picture of rage and anger and her first mate blesses the closeness they share to enable him to pick apart the facade and unearth the buried treasure that is human emotions of fear, sadness, and insecurity beneath. _ _

_ _“Why? Why do they - “_ _

_ _The brown of her eyes drown in feeling and Harry no longer wants to dig. The treasure chest that is his captain's emotions is nigh and in this moment, contrary to his pirate nature, he doesn't seek more. He offers something in exchange. _ _

_ _Honesty. _ _

_ _“They don't know what we have, their hate's too strong,” Harry grabs at a toned dark arm and holds it in place, causing the frenzied pacing to cease, “We gotta be strong now, captain. Darling. We can't look back.”_ _

_ _Uma tries to fight her way out of the grip that keeps her stayed, her legs like phantom tentacles, aching to escape. But this is Harry and she hears his words. She _feels_ his assurance in the unwavering grasp he has on her bicep. _ _

_ _“They don't know,” she repeats his words, her voice somewhat faint but she doesn't harp on it. She does not have to be unshakable before him. Never has. _ _

_ _“And they never will,” Harry says with a nod and it is like a vow, a promise. Despite the sadness with which the words are spoken, there is fortitude there, oath-like in its conviction, “We make our own home now. Just us.”_ _

_ _Uma can't help but believe. And the tender kiss that seals it is far sweeter than any discarded fruit Auradon could ever offer._ _

_ _“Just us.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm an Uma shipper, I know that now. I can literally ship her with anyone. But Huma -- Harry/Uma -- it owns me in a way that is probably unhealthy and I don't give a damn. I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.


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